by J. B. Markes
“It’s funnel,” I said. “It’s called fool’s funnel.”
Chapter 20
Harper was still in the Sentinel office when I left, beaming at me like an idiot, like he’d done me some great service. I gave him a silent warning to steer clear of me, but he misjudged either my mood or the source of my frustration. The Sentinels had been questioning him for hours and made sure he had seen me when I was brought in. They had used me to get him to talk. Ever the hero, he had quickly obliged. I was too angry to speak to him, so I left as quickly as possible.
I now had a five-sentinel escort, led by Seeker Arland, whom I had previously met that night in the Archseer’s chamber, where I’d caught my first glimpse of necromancy in action. We turned every head along the way to Gustobald’s hut, with most of the curiosity directed toward the inspector and myself, the only two not wearing the shield-shaped crest of the Sentinels. “Stay alert once we’re inside,” Arland said. “A necromancer will strike you down just as soon as look at you.”
“Gustobald’s not a fighter,” I said, dripping with indignation. “He’s a harmless old man.”
“Tell that to the Archseer,” Ruby said.
I moved away from Ruby to whisper privately with the inspector. “I know what it looks like, but think about it. It was Gustobald who discovered Master Bartleby was poisoned in the first place. Why would he draw attention to the evidence that pointed to him as the killer? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“I agree,” he said. “There is any number of possible explanations, but we won’t know the truth until we talk to him.”
“Look around you. Do you think a necromancer will get a fair trial from these people?”
“Miss Ives, you had your chance to come to me with this information. When you shut me out, I had to do things my own way. It’s in the Sentinels’ hands now. You have my word that he will be given ample opportunity to speak on his own behalf. That’s the best I can give.”
“He didn’t do it.”
“How can you be so sure?” he asked.
“I just am. I know him.”
“Not good enough.”
“Sometimes it is. Sometimes you just know a person. Look at me. Do you think me capable of murder?”
He looked at me with tired eyes, and I knew I was speaking with the investigator, not the man. “A killer is no more than a man who has run out of options. All of us are capable, Miss Ives. Each and every one of us. Never forget that.” After this, the inspector closed himself off to me and I didn’t get another word out of him.
A man or woman who has run out of options. The bookkeeper Mathis, whom we had always suspected to have carried out the deed, had seemingly no motive whatsoever. He held a prestigious position that many wizards would hang up their wands to attain. Upon the Archseer’s death, his abrasive apprentice Miss Sinclair stood to inherit everything, whereas Mathis would only put himself in danger of losing his own job—a job that he had been terrified enough to abandon in his final hours. Could Deblin Bartleby, a member of the Black Hand, have orchestrated Mathis’s suicide?
Deblin Bartleby hadn’t visited his brother in years, and killing the Archseer would do nothing to repair the rift in their relationship. A quest for vengeance, perhaps? What longstanding debt could resurface after such a long period of dormancy? The brother Bartleby had insisted that the Archseer was no target for assassination long before he had been exposed as one of their number. He, too, had been there that night when we had first inspected the room for clues. Had he seen the glass on the stand and returned later to frame Gustobald? Bartleby admitted to having been warded against magical scrying. If he had returned secretly to the room, it would have been impossible for magic to detect his presence. He would only need to buy Mathis’s silence—by any means necessary.
But the Archseer had invited the necromancer to the Academy Magus to find his future killer. Gustobald wouldn’t be working with Bartleby if he knew the man to be involved. I longed to tell the inspector everything I had learned from Gustobald, but I felt such guilt at doubting my friend in the first place that I couldn’t betray his trust again. I would leave it to Gustobald to explain his situation.
But here I was working with the Sentinels, the ones who had given up on the case well before Gustobald and I had started our own search. They were eager to close it again as soon as possible, with no regard for the truth of the matter. Even if Inspector Raines could be trusted to do the right thing, there was no hope that justice would ever be served in the magic city.
When we reached the cottage, the Sentinels fanned out to cover the windows and doors. “With me, Miss Ives,” the inspector said as he approached the front step. He paused at the blanket of darkness skirting the building and watched with interest as one of the sentinels removed the spell. To my surprise, several mushrooms in the bed shrunk visibly in the direct sunlight. The inspector shook his head, more in disbelief than disapproval. He first tried the knocker, but when no answer came he turned the knob and gave me a surprised look when the door swung free. “Mr. Pitch! It is I, Inspector Bastion Raines. I am now entering your domicile. I am with the Sentinels. Please show yourself at once.”
“This door is never unlocked,” I said. “Not even when he’s home.” I stepped inside and the inspector grabbed me tightly around the wrist, but I gently removed his hand. “If he was here, he would have told us to go away.” It was quiet, so I ventured farther inside. It must have been an affront to Mr. Raines’s authority because he followed close on my heels and finally cut in front of me.
“Mr. Pitch? Are you in?” The inspector called loudly, in case the old man hadn’t heard his first warning. I allowed myself the hope that the old man had packed up and left after our quarrel earlier, but from the looks of things he was still living there.
“It’s just as well,” Seeker Arland said. “Our search of the premises will go much smoother in his absence.” Arland waved to the sentinel at the window and moved farther into the house toward the kitchen, while the inspector took inventory of the first room.
Ruby entered the cottage next, and I followed after Arland to avoid talking to her. Arland was moving fast and scanning each room carefully, his wand at the ready. He didn’t spend too much time in the kitchen, but passed through to the study with the spirit-warming fire, then on to the door leading to what appeared to be a small closet in the back. Arland paused a moment and raised his wand to the door. “Show yourself,” he said.
Instinctively I reached for my own wand only to remember that I was still unarmed. Any spells I chose to cast would leech my own energy and most likely send me back to the infirmary, but there was no telling what horrors lurked in the hidden places of a necromancer’s abode. I steeled my nerve.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Arland said without looking in my direction.
“She’s not here by choice,” Ruby said as she entered from the direction we had just come, inspector in tow. She brandished her unsightly dagger-wand at eye level in front of her. Her stance was open, practiced, befitting a hand mage. “In the closet!”
“I see it,” Arland replied.
“Stand to the side, Ives,” Ruby commanded. Before I had even moved, she waved her hand and the door swung open to reveal none other than Gustobald Pitch.
The necromancer stood with his back to us, like a child who had been sent to the corner for misbehaving. Ruby crossed in front of me to get a better line-of-sight and Arland reaffirmed his sweaty grip on his wand. I waited for Gustobald to turn around and curse us—that is to say, swear an oath at us—for trespassing, but the old man didn’t budge.
“Come out of the closet at once or we will strike you down!” Arland gave a silent nod to Ruby, who responded in kind.
Things were getting out of hand. I had no idea what game Gustobald was playing, but I couldn’t take the chance that they would follow through on their threat. Ignoring the inspector’s protest, I walked between the two sentinels and into the closet. I reached out and placed a gentle h
and on Gustobald’s shoulder, turning him about. He didn’t resist, but his movements were sluggish. He looked past me as though I wasn’t even there, so I gave him a light shake in an attempt to jar him back to his senses. “What are you doing here in the dark, Gustobald?” When he didn’t answer, I pulled him out of the closet and brought him to his seat by the fire.
“His mind is gone,” Inspector Raines said as he moved into the closet. “Else he has suffered a great shock to his system.”
“Not likely,” Ruby said, but Arland shook his head at her.
“It’s no surprise,” the Seeker said. “Once you’ve walked the nether realm, you’ll never be the same again. And this one was half-mad to begin with.”
Ruby and Seeker Arland relaxed a bit, but never lowered their wands. I could hear the other sentinels rustling through the kitchen cabinets and drawers. They were anything but delicate; the clinking and clanking of iron and clay and the shattering of glass made me uneasy.
“Gustobald, what’s wrong with you?” I whispered, shaking him by the shoulder.
“He’s going to the Hold,” the inspector said, exiting the closet. He pointed across the room to the bottle of liquor on the mantle, resting in the exact place Gustobald had left the tainted glass hour before. Raines rushed across the room and lifted the bottle carefully.
I shook my head in disbelief as Arland waved his hand over the glass decanter. The magic took effect and the liquid turned from amber to luminescent green. There was nothing left to say. I looked back to Gustobald, who was still staring stupidly into the ether, unable to offer excuses that would have surely been ignored anyway.
“Gustobald!” I called, but he didn’t even turn toward me. I grabbed the necromancer roughly by the collar of his robes and gave him a good smack in the face. “Wake up, Gustobald! Wake up!” I would have hit him again, but Ruby grabbed me from behind. Knowing full well her strength, I didn’t bother resisting. She dragged me away as Arland closed in on my old friend.
“This is a mistake,” I said, eyeing the bottle in Raines’s hand. “Why would Gustobald keep the murder weapon in his house? Look at him. He’s obviously under some sort of enchantment. He’s not himself.”
“It may be so,” the inspector said. “But the law is the law. He must be taken and questioned.”
“What left is there to question?” Ruby asked. “He’s hiding from the Sentinels in a closet and he has the murder weapon. It’s the Hold for him.”
“Not for this one,” Seeker Arland said. “Not for what he’s done.”
“Now, hold on,” the inspector said. “He must be given a chance to speak.”
“I don’t think so,” Arland said. “Gustobald Pitch, for crimes against the Academy Magus and the Archseer himself, and by my authority as Seeker of the Second Sentinels, I sentence you to die.”
“No!” I was still weak from my time in the infirmary, and Ruby was too strong for me to break free. “Stop this right now. It’s not right!”
“She’s right, Arland,” Inspector Raines said. “Put down your wand at once.”
“You have no authority here, Raines,” Arland said, and Gustobald chose that instant to speak on his own behalf. He gurgled and coughed an unintelligible string, lurching up out of his chair.
“It’s the black speech!” One of the sentinels shouted, but Arland was quick with his wand, shouting a curse I couldn’t identify with my limited knowledge of spellcraft. A barely visible beam arched between the tip of the Seeker’s wand and the necromancer, and the next instant, Gustobald was dust.
It all happened so fast, I had no time to call out. All stood in complete silence staring at the pile that used to be a person. It is my firm belief that every person present was changed that day. One cannot witness a living person dispatched in such an inhumane manner without losing a piece of one’s own humanity. My legs buckled and I fell to my knees. Inspector Raines and Ruby each came to my side, lending me support, but I didn’t bother standing.
“What?” I asked, trying to catch my breath. “Why?” I searched for the right question to put some sense to what had just happened, but the inspector’s face darkened and I knew I would find none.
“Go home, Miss Ives,” he said, helping Ruby pull me to my feet. “Do you hear me? Go home at once and don’t look back.” The room cleared out and Ruby let go of my hands. Inspector Raines took me by the arms and shook me gently, but I didn’t feel it. I don’t remember much of what he said to me after that.
I couldn’t move from the spot. I stood staring at the remnants of the man I once knew. When a close friend or loved one dies, people often dwell on their last words spoken to that person, but that wasn’t the case. I couldn’t remember exactly what I had said, but I knew that it wasn’t enough. Gustobald died as he had lived—with the entire world against him, friendless.
“Take her home now,” Raines said, pointing at Ruby and storming out.
“Ives.” Left alone with me in the wake of such horror, Ruby’s voice was softer now. “Isabel, we need to go.”
“Where’s the glass?” I asked, staggering to the fireplace. “I should take it back to Harper. We made a mistake.” I brushed aside some of the more imposing knick-knacks, not remembering exactly where the tumbler had been. But it didn’t matter; the tainted glass was gone, leaving Harper’s description the only testimony it had ever existed at all. “Where’s the glass?”
“Looks like the old man was in the process of covering his tracks,” she replied.
“That’s what it looks like,” I said, smearing the tears across my cheeks. Ruby walked around the room as if she didn’t hear me. Was she still searching for anything else that might be of value to the investigation, ignoring the facts right in front of her face? “Seeker Arland doesn’t really believe what he said. He must know something—”
“What he knows or doesn’t know is of no concern to you or me,” she replied, not quite convinced of her own words. “The Seeker despises necromancy. And he’s a powerful man.”
“It’s not right, Ruby.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you,” she said consolingly. “And you’ve done your part.” My part. The thought disgusted me. She reached behind her and pulled my walnut stalk from her belt, then held it out to me handle-first. “I won’t apologize for being cautious, but I was wrong about you. Master Virgil will be pleased to know you came through for us. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
“So that’s it?” I asked. “What’s done is done?”
“I can’t stop you from looking into things,” she said with a long careful glance. “But be careful who you talk to. Inspector Raines is right. You should probably go home.” She didn’t wait for what would surely be an awkward exchange. I took my wand, and she left me alone in the study with my thoughts and a pile of ash. If she had lingered, I might have told her how little I cared about my own life at that point, let alone about Master Virgil’s approval. I was tired and angry, ready to tear down the entire corrupt institution—or run away and leave it to its own devices.
I turned back to the mantle, to the place where the inspector had spotted the bottle—to the same place where the glass used to be. There was a raised discolored ring in its place. Not realizing what I was seeing, I ran my hand over the stone and retrieved a small mushroom cap I had seen only once before in my life. The chill of the grave sunk deep beneath my skin, and I looked about to ensure I was truly alone before popping the deadman’s delight into my mouth and leaving the cottage forever.
Chapter 21
I didn’t take much from my personal quarters—my satchel, my wand, a backpack and bedroll I had never used. I had heard of mages who made a living going town to town, entertaining the common folk. I wasn’t sure how they did it; most of my belongings were simply too heavy to carry. The last thing I packed was my personal spellbook, which wouldn’t be worth its own weight. I wouldn’t be able to use it, but it was a record of my life up until that point. A history of Isabel Ives scribbled in archaic form
ulae. The last half was just empty pages, which a more naïve person would take as a symbol of opportunity.
I paused at the looking glass to inspect my condition. I didn’t seem any worse off than I’d been months ago, despite having just snuck out of the infirmary the previous day. I washed my face and brushed my hair before tying it into a ponytail and stuffing the horsehair brush into my backpack. I seemed the same Isabel I’d always been, minus the starburst sigil which I had carefully removed with a nib-knife. The bare patch was cleaner than the surrounding area, with stitching hanging free where the crest was attached to the cloth. The lack of representation made me feel like a red-robe again, though in fact I was much lower in status now.
Akasha greeted me in the hallway. I closed the door behind me before she could run inside, and she looked up at me in silent reprimand. “Sorry, kitty,” I said. “I’m leaving and I can’t take care of you anymore. I can barely take care of myself.” At one point, in another life, Akasha would have made a fine familiar. But the process was taxing on body and mind, even for a healthy person. I should have undertaken the ritual years ago; there was no way I could manage it now.
I didn’t stop by Regina’s room on the way out. She was already hard at work initiating the new recruits for the coming quarter. And she still wasn’t speaking to me. I wasn’t sure if she would be angry once she found out I had left without a proper goodbye, but the longer I remained in the Tower of Hands, the higher the chance I would be summoned to one of the masters’ offices. I couldn’t take any more lectures. It was midday when I left the tower’s outer courtyard, Akasha stalking behind.
The sky was overcast, which helped to keep the heat at bay. It would be good weather for my journey north, barring one of the late summer squalls the region was so famous for. I could have taken Short Street to Sophic’s Rise, but that was the path of reason and order which no longer belonged to me. I was free now, and it seemed only natural for me to go off path to find my way. Besides, it would take me past Gustobald’s hut one last time.
